Framing the debate: we need to understand sex trafficking and exploitation better

Framing the debate: we need to understand sex trafficking and exploitation better

Sex Trafficking was very prominent in the news last week with Newsweek dedicating its cover to Sex Slaves in the US. The weekly newspaper’s report on the conditions and treatment of women providing sexual services to men working on farms was graphic. It feels easy to come away from reading such reports convinced that trafficking is a heinous crime that subjects its victims to relentless, exceptionally violent abuse and coercion that requires urgent action to stamp it out. This helps explain why the call to fight what is being called ‘modern slavery’ appears to unite people and politicians of all stripes. Yet, with such urgent unity, why is it that when we try to decide what is to be done about trafficking discord and acrimony are never far away?

I would argue that luridness of such reports on trafficking, and the emotional responses they provoke, should caution researchers and policy-makers to pause and reflect. The hyperbole that is often used leads to simplistic and misleading conception of trafficking as a straightforward crime involving purely innocent victims and monstrously evil villains. At Open Democracy Quirk and O’Connell-Davidsondiscuss how these popular representations of trafficking, while effective at securing public attention, prove obstructive in framing and addressing the exploitation at the heart of trafficking. Much of how we see trafficking depends on the lens we adopt to see it through and the extent of trafficking varies wildly depending on the definitions and the methods used to quantify it. In point of fact The Economistrecently held up the trafficking indices - TIP and GSI - as examples of using data as instruments of soft power, rather than as tools to inform policy. In our urgency to do something about trafficking we are neglecting the accuracy and insight needed to actually tackle the problem.